


Untidy Furrows

by secretspeller



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Community: 1dkink2015, M/M, Self-Harm, past self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 12:47:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4706576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretspeller/pseuds/secretspeller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Louis was young and stupid and so angry he would have set himself on fire if he knew it would burn his anger to ash too, he hadn’t really been thinking about his future self’s ability to have sex or have a boyfriend without having to explain the state of his upper thighs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untidy Furrows

**Author's Note:**

> This story in centrally concerned with self harm scars. No one is actively self harming in the course of the story, but there are a couple descriptive moments. Please be careful with yourself.
> 
> Written for [this prompt](http://1dkink2015.livejournal.com/1450.html?thread=224938#t224938) on the 2015 kink meme. 
> 
> Title from In California by Joanna Newsom.

Nick was a little bit tipsy the first time he and Louis had sex, but even if he had been sober, Nick wouldn’t have noticed Louis’s scars. Louis had drunk less than Nick, but he still felt warm and slow with the alcohol. Even then Louis was still conscious enough of his scars to keep them covered. Louis never took his pants off. He went down on Nick with Nick laid out on his couch and Louis crouched on the ground next to it with one of Nick’s absurd legs sprawled down around his body. It was a horrible position, Louis had to support part of his weight on his elbow, but Nick’s cock in his mouth was lovely. Louis’s face was lit up sharp by the streetlight through the curtains where he was tucked up between Nick’s legs sucking him off. Nick couldn’t have looked away even if he had wanted to.

It was easy for Louis to slide his hand into his pants and jerk himself off. It was familiar too. He didn’t do it a lot, but he had figured this out, a way for him to make sure no one would ever see his scars.

Louis came slightly after Nick, with Nick’s come in his mouth and Nick’s toes brushing against his clothed knee. He was done before Nick could even think about offering him anything.

“I would have done you, you know” Nick said. He had thought a lot about it, really, on their way to Louis blowing him in his living room and before. He had always thought Louis was very hot, in his own slightly grubby way. Nick could easily image Louis as one of the boys he went to school with, confident, popular, and at ease in themselves. It was easy for Nick to imagine being at school with Louis, watching him laughing with his friends across the hall, and feeling slightly sick with wanting to be his friend and to make him laugh. Nick was pretty sure if One Direction had been around when he was fifteen he would have had posters of Louis on his walls.

He had pictured Louis naked and unabashed and hard. It wasn’t romantic, exactly, but it was more romantic than Louis still clothed and with his dick hanging out washing the come off his hand in Nick’s kitchen sink.

Louis just grinned his dirtiest grin over his shoulder at Nick. “Didn’t need to,” he said.

It started raining sometime after they got to Nick’s flat, so Nick lent Louis a giant black pull-over hoodie and a promotional umbrella from some university’s chemical engineering department. While Louis waited for his car, Nick tried to remember out loud how he came to own the umbrella. Louis couldn’t tell if Nick was bumping their shoulders together on purpose or if he was just very unsteady on his feet.

“This was fun,” Nick said when Louis car came. Then he winced and laughed. “That was so smooth. I mean, you don’t have to leave.”

“Do you know how many nights last year I slept in my own bed?” Louis asked in response. “Fifteen. I spent whatever 365 minus fifteen is sleeping in hotels.” Louis was diverting. It was true, but it was a distraction.

The real reason was that Louis didn’t want to get all the way undressed in front of Nick. He knew he could probably manage to get ready to sleep without Nick seeing anything, sleep in his pants or complain about being cold until Nick offered him pajamas, but he couldn’t be sure, and if Nick wanted to fuck again in the morning Louis would probably say yes, he would want to say yes, but he wouldn’t be able to keep Nick from seeing, and knowing.

So Louis left.

Louis knew he wasn’t objective about his scars. He thought they were probably lighter than they looked when he stared at them in the mirror. He felt like he stared at them so long sometimes that they morphed and mutated in his mind, spreading like a tumor over his upper thigh. Sometimes they looked red and glossy and plump, like fruit growing from his skin. Sometimes they looked pale and gossamer and insubstantial like light. When he thought of them, he could see them red and raised and fresh just as clearly as he could see them as they were now, or like he thought they might be now. Sometimes he wanted to find someone and strip naked and trust them to tell him how they really looked because he honestly couldn’t tell. He was sure, though, that it was obvious where they came from once you saw them. Sure Nick would know if Louis let him see.

He knew that even if Nick saw nothing really bad would happen. Louis had already talked himself into trusting Nick with the knowledge that he was gay. Louis didn’t think Nick would tell anyone, probably not. And even if he did, Louis wasn’t in school anymore, it wasn’t like Nick could tell his teachers.

Nick could laugh at him, Louis supposed, or think less of him. He might not be able to look at him without pity and sympathy and worry all over his face. Louis tried not to imagine the sorts of jokes Nick might make, if he knew. Nick asking him sarcastically if he was going to cut himself every time Louis was annoyed or unhappy about anything. Louis wouldn’t be able to stand that, any of that. He imagined Nick’s face, all soft and gentle as he asked Louis over and over if he was alright with that special weight people only used when they were worried he might be about to start crying about something they thought was dumb. If he did that Louis would have to stop letting Nick ask him to dinner, stop letting Nick kiss him, stop answering Nick’s texts. Louis would lose Nick, and it would suck.

But, Louis could imagine the future where he never let Nick see his scars. He could never let Nick see him all the way naked. That would mean no more sex, no spending the night. Nick would notice that Louis was hiding things from him and turning him down and getting distant, Louis thought, and ultimately one of them would stop answering the other’s texts.

When Louis was young and stupid and so angry he would have set himself on fire if he knew it would burn his anger to ash too, he hadn’t really been thinking about his future self’s ability to have sex or have a boyfriend without having to explain the state of his upper thighs. He had mostly been thinking about making sure no one saw and no one knew and that no one would worry or laugh at him.

He was glad, most of the time, that he had chosen somewhere so hidden. He had met people, women mostly, who had their scars on their arms or wrists where they were so much harder to hide. His whole life would have been different if he had cut his arms. He couldn’t imagine going through The X Factor wearing only long sleeves, or being placed into a pop boy band with visible scars on his arms. Sometimes, though, he thought how maybe it would be easier if his scars were in places where he couldn’t hide them, so everyone would just know right away and he would never have to tell anyone.

He had worked this out, a way for him to fuck attractive men when he wanted to without having to show anyone or let anyone know. He would blow them, or wank them off, and then get himself off without ever getting all the way undressed. Then he would leave and never let it happen with the same man again so he wouldn’t notice that Louis never took off his pants. It worked well enough. He had a lot of fun. Louis had given a lot of blow jobs to strangers, but he had never had a boyfriend.

Nick wasn’t a stranger though.

Louis and Nick had snuck out of a terrible BBC corporate cocktail party together, and then gotten dinner together. They traded stories about the people at the party they had left, (Louis had been trapped in a conversation about either horse or dog racing, he couldn’t tell which, and a sixty year old woman had been convinced Nick’s job was to make music videos and nothing he said could dissuade her,) and then about Harry, and then about everything else. Louis hadn’t meant to flirt, exactly, but Nick was funny and handsome, and when he looked at Louis it felt like he was touching him. Eye contact, Louis thought while his heart sped up, contact. Louis had always liked Nick, or sort of anyway. He liked that Nick existed and was part of his life. But he found he liked Nick as a person too. He liked the way Nick blinked and his skitterey long fingers.

Nick had asked him to dinner again five days later, and then a week after that, and Louis kissed him and then agreed when Nick asked him back to his flat.

He had known it was a bad idea. There was no future for Louis with boys. He had a firm cut off after one blowjob. He didn’t want Nick to be one of the men he never saw again, but he couldn’t convince himself to turn Nick’s offers down either.

Even then, after Louis had reached the point where he knew he couldn’t continue seeing Nick without Nick knowing, he wanted see Nick again. He kept imagining telling Nick about things, bizarre interview questions and funny vines and the time years ago when Liam asked if his lungs were in his stomach or just next to them, and everything. He didn’t want to end things with Nick. He just didn’t. The only other option, as far as he could tell, was for Nick to find out. 

He texted Nick ‘Ask me to dinner again.’

The second time Nick and Louis had sex, Nick noticed his scars. Louis let him notice his scars.

Louis had meant to tell him over dinner, or in the car. He had picked out the words he would use, even, but it was too easy to just let the conversation flow along its natural path. Every time he tried to say them, he felt frozen and underwater with anxiety. So he didn’t tell Nick, but he didn’t stop Nick either when he pulled Louis close by the hem of his shirt and kissed him and led him into his bedroom.

Louis was shaking while he unbuttoned Nick’s shirt. Nick noticed and kissed his fingertips and pulled him close against his chest. Louis felt out of his body with nerves, except where Nick’s hands were touching him.

Nick laid Louis out on his bed. Louis was shirtless and mostly hard, and Nick dragged his jeans and pants together down over his hips and legs. Nick noticed Louis’s face before he noticed his scars.

Louis looked terrified. He was frozen and breathing quickly through his mouth, wide-eyed. His shoulders were tight and raised. The way he was lying, especially with the way Nick was looming over him, made Nick think of the moment after one character punched another in a movie.

Nick sat back on his heels. “Alright?” he asked, but by then he had noticed the scars on Louis’s left thigh. There were a lot of them, high on Louis’s thigh where all but the skimpiest of underwear would hide them. The longest ones must have been three or four inches long. Some were arranged in neat rows of identical parallel lines, and some were disorganized like cross-hatching. They were silvery and flat against Louis’s tanner skin, old, years old.

Louis watched Nick notice his scars. Nick’s eyes flicked away and then back and then away again.

When Nick looked back at Louis’s face, Louis’s jaw was clenched and lifted proudly, but his eyes were still still wild. Nick had been about to ask, but Louis’s face convinced him in an instant not to. Instead he kissed one of Louis’s hipbones and then moved up Louis’s body until they were face to face.

“Alright?” he asked again. He meant both do you want to keep going and are you okay, but Louis’s face made neither of those seem like okay questions to ask outright.

“Yeah,” Louis’s breath brushed Nick’s cheek and jaw.

So Nick tried not to think about it, and concentrated on kissing Louis.

Louis was fingering Nick when Nick’s cock twitched so suddenly and dramatically that Louis jumped. It was enough to surprise a laugh out of Louis, and then he was laughing uncontrollably. Nick liked laughing during sex. It was fun, laughing was fun, and bodies were funny, but Louis sounded almost hysterical. Louis’s laughter shifted somehow and turned nice and kept going, until Nick had to join in. He was laughing with Louis’s fingers in his ass. He ran his fingers over Louis’s cheekbone and then into his hair once Louis stopped. Louis blinked slowly and then kissed the tip of Nick’s cock, gently, and chastely, he same way he might kiss him nose. It felt like a thank you.

Afterwards, Louis put back on his pants and Nick made them tea and let Louis pick through his kitchen for something to eat. Louis came away from Nicks freezer with a bag of frozen blueberries which he ate straight from the bag, still frozen. They stained his fingers purple, and his lips.

Nick noticed the way that Louis kept one of his hands curled protectively over the place high on his thigh where his scars were hidden. Nick didn’t think he even knew he was doing it, like an old habit.

Nick wasn’t stupid, he knew that people got scars like Louis’s when they cut themselves. He’d had a friend in university who had scars like that up and down both arms. She had worn sleeveless tops when it was hot and Nick had been hit every time she did by how brave it was. She had talked about it pretty openly, cutting herself, and then how hard she had worked to stop cutting herself. Nick couldn’t imagine ever hurting himself. He would do a lot to avoid being in pain, but when she talked about it, he could almost understand. It made her feel real, she had said, when she felt so numb she couldn’t quite be sure she was alive.

Nick tried to imagine it, in the quiet moments of his days. Louis, his Louis, who was so confident and bright like the sun and surrounded by love, alone and sad and hurting so much he had to hurt himself to get through it.

He spent an evening alone googling for older and older interviews with Louis. He watched Louis’s face, leaning close to his screen, as if it could answer his questions. When, and why, and do you still, and maybe most of all, are you okay now, please be okay now. There was nothing in Louis’s face that helped, not really. Louis looked nervous all through the X Factor. Nick hadn’t noticed before. He had been distracted by Louis’s jokes and his slightly manic charm, but he could see it looking back.

Now that he’d seen it once, Nick couldn’t stop noticing the way Louis’s hand fluttered to touch and to cover the place on his left hip where his scars were. Nick couldn’t stop wondering if Louis had cut himself during The X Factor, or afterwards. In every interview he tried to imagine the scars under Louis’s hand.

He wanted to ask Louis. He imagined pulling out his phone to text Louis, but he couldn’t imagine what to say. ‘Hey, did you used to cut yourself’ maybe, or ‘I noticed your scars and I know what they’re from,’ or ‘Are you still so unhappy you hurt yourself.’ Everything he could think of to say felt weird and jokey, or unbearably maudlin. The problem was, as far as he could figure out, that he didn’t know how Louis thought about them, so he didn’t know how to think of them either. Louis had clearly not wanted to talk about them, so all Nick could think of to do was not talk about them too.

Nick remembered all of the sudden, how Louis hadn’t let him touch him that first night, how Louis had shrunk away from him, and left so quickly. He had been hiding his scars, Nick realized. Nick wondered how much of Louis’s life was spent hiding his scars.

Nick didn’t exactly agonize over Louis scars, he was busy, he didn’t have time for agonizing, but they sat in his mind like a shadow through the window.

Nick invited Louis to his apartment for baked pasta and movies a few days later. Louis was leaving on tour not tomorrow, and not the day after tomorrow, but the day after that. Nick had been collecting tiny odd gifts to have Harry give Louis over the course of the tour for the last two weeks. He had ended up with three mix tapes, a pair of warm socks, a bag of novelty penis-shaped hard candy, a printed-off copy of a truly terrible photo of Nick for Louis to laugh at, and maybe to remember Nick by too, a bar of chocolate with bacon in it, and a set of six vintage surfing-themed postcards from LA in the 1980’s.

It felt like overkill, like Louis would text Nick part way through the tour and tell Nick off for trying so hard. It was overkill, Nick was pretty sure, but it had been nice, thinking of Louis and finding small ways to turn those thoughts into nice moments for Louis. As much as Nick imagined Louis texting him that it was too much too soon and that Nick obviously cared more than Louis did, Nick also imagined Louis surprised by the first gift, smiling with the kind of delight that came from unexpected presents. He imagined Louis eating the chocolate and wearing the socks and understanding what Nick was trying to say with them.

Nick was a little bit worried, though, that Louis would think Nick was sending him off without a thought or a goodbye if he didn’t mark Louis’s departure in some immediately apparent way.

“Because I’m going to miss you so much, you get to pick the film,” Nick said, scooping pasta onto their plates. He had made a lasagna with lemon-white wine sauce instead of red sauce. “Give me something to remember you by.”

Louis chose the first Alien movie from Nick’s DVD case for some reason.

“It’s memorable,” Louis laughed when Nick raised his eyebrows at the choice.

Louis finished his dinner and then curled up against Nick, pressing his face most of the way against Nick’s chest and tucking his legs over Nick’s legs. Nick wasn’t sure Louis could even see the TV from that position. When Nick felt Louis jerk against him, he realized it didn’t matter if Louis could see the TV because he had fallen asleep.

Nick didn’t exactly want to watch Alien. It was an hour and a half of slowly drawn out tension where not very much happened except for Nick feeling more and more anxious for the characters until the end when the worst really did happen. But it seemed rude to turn it off after Louis had picked it, so Nick sat through to the end. It was worth it for the feeling of Louis’s weight against his chest and the warmth of his breath.

Nick shook Louis awake during the credits. “Are you staying here tonight?” He asked into Louis’s hair.

“Can I?” Louis asked.

Louis kissed Nick against the wall of his bedroom. He backed himself against the wall and then dragged Nick in close. Louis had a crease from Nick’s shirt pressed into his cheek. Nick ran his fingers over it twice and then settled in between Louis’s feet to blow him.

Louis was swaying above Nick and Nick reached out to run his hand up Louis’s thighs. At the last second he drew back before he touched the thatch of scars on Louis’s hip. He tried to turn the movement smoothly into reaching out to grab at Louis’s ass. He tried not to glance up at Louis’s face to check if he had seen, but he couldn’t stop himself and he looked up and met Louis’s eyes. As soon as their gazes met, Louis flicked his eyes away and then shut them. So he had seen then, Nick thought.

Louis didn’t say anything. He came in Nick’s mouth and then man-handled Nick into bed and went down on him.

Nick half expected Louis to say something about it afterwards. He sat on Nick’s bathroom counter and watched intently as Nick washed his face. Nick watched Louis watching him and waited, but after a moment, Louis’s grinned suddenly and poked Nick hard in the side.

Nick twitched away involuntarily. Louis laughed at him and Nick pinched Louis’s stomach gently in retaliation. Louis poked more at Nick’s sides and tried to lick the tip of his nose, but Nick held him off and brushed ticklish kisses across Louis’s shoulders until Louis seemed suitably distracted from tormenting him. Nick didn’t notice until the morning how well Louis had distracted him too.

Louis left for his tour.

Nick texted Louis a lot. In general, Louis was a terrible texter. He would ignore most of his messages for days at a time, and then respond to everything in a big rush out of nowhere at three in the morning when he couldn’t sleep or whenever he was bored waiting for something.

Nick woke up five days after Louis left to one of Louis’s long messes of texts. ‘Harry gave me your chocolate bar,’ it started. ‘I’m trying it now.’ Then in a new message, ‘It’s good but weird. Bacon. Really.’

Nick smiled into his coffee mug while he scrolled through the rest of them. Louis had heard ‘My Life Would Suck Without You’ seven times in the last three days and he thought Harry might be pranking him with it.

Nick wasn’t sure if he wanted to read all Louis’s texts straight away or save them and parcel them out one at a time when he missed him. Well, he knew he wanted to read them all right then, but he thought it might be worth it to save them. It wasn’t quite like having breakfast with Louis, but Nick could imagine Louis sitting next to him, poking him with his cold toes and rambling about Kelly Clarkson and Harry’s philosophy of pranks. He could imagine Louis’s voice while he read his words, almost, how it would rise and fall, theatrical and pretend annoyed. It was almost as good as him being there, but nowhere near as good really.

Then, tucked in between two unrelated texts, Louis had sent ‘They’re just scars.’

And Nick just stared at it for a moment.

He couldn’t figure out how Louis would say it. Angry? Loud and bold? Whispered late at night while Nick might be sleeping? Did Louis want him to respond? Was he supposed to argue? Deny noticing them? Agree? Nick knew this was a trap he sometimes fell into, imagining that conversations were a series of things that people said to try and get specific reactions from him, and him trying to meet their expectations when all they wanted was for him to look when they showed him their insides and maybe let them peek inside him too. 

He didn’t respond to that text.

A little past seven that night Louis sent ‘You don’t have to not touch them they’re just scars.’ It was the only thing he had said. The text bubble was all alone of Nick’s phone.

Nick didn’t know how to turn his thoughts into words, and especially not into texts messages. He felt like Louis was giving him the tiniest sliver of a conversation and he wasn’t allowed to ask for more. Louis had been so determined not to talk about them, but now here he was volunteering information for Nick, or maybe not information, but something. Nick still couldn’t imagine actually asking anything about them though. Obviously Louis didn’t have to say anything he didn’t want to, but if he wanted to talk about them, Nick would listen. ‘Okay. I’m sorry.’ Nick texted back because it was all he could think of to say.

After Louis didn’t respond in five minutes, Nick thought that was probably the end of the conversation.

At four thirty in the morning Nick woke up with ‘Are they that ugly’ waiting on his phone.

Nick didn’t want to have anymore of this conversation over text messages. He was terrified now that he had been handling the whole conversation as wrong as he possibly could. He couldn’t help reading a note of hurt into Louis’s message.

He wanted to ask Louis if it was okay to ask about his scars, but even asking that felt like an intrusion, or maybe like an incision. Like it might hurt Louis.

‘Of course not’ Nick sent back. ‘I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.’

He imagined Louis snapping back ‘well you did, so good job, mate.’ but Louis didn’t respond at all.

Their texts went back to normal eventually. Nick sent Louis updates on the weather in London and some of his more interesting thoughts about his days and the people he met and the things he read online. Louis sent Nick three more bursts of texts.

Nick missed Louis more than he had expected to.

Three weeks after Louis first brought up his scars, he sent Nick another text. ‘You can ask about them.’ It read. Nick knew the ‘them’ in question was Louis’s scars.

‘When you get back, if you like’ he replied. He wanted to see Louis’s face if they ever did talk about it. He wanted to make sure he wasn’t hurting him. Nick was a little worried Louis might have decided he needed to tell Nick more than he wanted to in order for Nick to like him or something. He wanted to see Louis’s face if they ever did talk about it, just so he could be sure Louis wasn’t making some sort of terrible bargain with himself. 

Nick would like Louis even if he became a spy and could never tell Nick anything about himself ever again, Nick was pretty sure.

Louis didn’t stop telling Nick things about himself. In the three weeks before Louis’s break, Nick was convinced he became the foremost expert in Louis’s work-out routine, sleep habits, and favorite foods on the planet, quite possibly including Louis himself.

Louis didn’t see Nick first thing when he got home. He drove up to see his family first. Nick liked not being Louis’s first priority, in some weird way. It meant Louis didn’t need to be his either, which was a bit of a relief. Nick didn’t have time in his life for the sorts of relationships other people seemed to end up in, where their boyfriends and girlfriends ate up all their time, where they spent every minute together. Louis didn’t have time for that either, as far as Nick could tell, and it was nice how matched up they were.

All the same, Nick couldn’t stop grinning for the three day before he knew he would see Louis again. He puttered around cleaning bits of his flat intently to distract himself from the swirling soup of anxiety and anticipation in his stomach.

Nick caught himself nervously giggling at nothing in the cab on the way to Louis’s house.

He texted Louis instead of ringing his bell. ‘I’m here. Let me in?’ Then, while he waited for Louis to reply or let him in, Nick felt the sudden weight of anxiety that everything he had ever done to lead him to this moment, standing there waiting for Louis, was a mistake. The feeling dissipated when Nick exhaled.

And then there was Louis. He cracked open the door slowly and stood close to the doorframe. He looked so handsome, clean shaven and shyly smiling. 

“Do you want to come in?” He asked, even as he was tugging Nick inside by his sleeve. He looked nervous, Nick half noticed.

Louis hugged Nick hard in his entryway. He scrubbed his cheek against the front of Nick’s shirt. Nick felt like a balloon being inflated, like when a good song started to swell and he couldn’t figure out how to hold the feeling inside his body. He touched the place where Louis’s hair ended on the back of his neck and then the curve of his ear and the hinge of his jaw to try to let some of the feeling out.

“Missed you,” Nick said, because it was true.

Louis kissed him a little crookedly on the mouth. “Yeah,” he said. Then he head butted Nick gently in the collarbone. “Let’s eat.”

They went to a tiny dim Ethiopian restaurant and Louis mostly told Nick the same stories he had texted him, but it was better to hear them and watch Louis’s face while he told them. Harry had promised he wasn’t secretly bribing everyone to play ‘My Life Would Suck Without You,’ but Louis heard it a total of 26 times on tour. Nick wondered if Harry really was orchestrating it, and if he should text him and offer to help. He could probably get it on the radio a few times, but Louis would know it was him, and that felt a bit like a declaration. Nick wasn’t quite there yet, but soon, maybe.

Nick watched Louis pinch off bits of injera bread with his dexterous fingers. Watched him gesture while he spoke, tight and expressive. The quick movements of his eyes. His sharp smiles and his soft ones. There was so much more to Louis than just his words. So much that was lost in text messages.

Later, Nick pressed his bare chest against Louis’s in his bed. Nick didn’t want to fuck Louis so much as to wrap all his limbs around Louis and touch all of his skin and look at him. He rubbed his nose on the boney part of Louis’s shoulder. He traced his fingers hard up Louis’s thighs all the way from his knees to his hipbones, pressing into the muscle. Louis gasped softly somewhere above Nick’s head.

Afterwards, they curled up on Nick’s sofa with a movie channel on quietly in the background. Louis’s sleep schedule was too fucked up for him to fall asleep. Nick could have slept, but he would rather sit up with Louis than get a few extra minutes of sleep alone.

Nick wondered if they could fall asleep out here. He felt warm and muddled. He was tracing swirls with his fingertips over the curve of Louis’s knee.

Louis was watching the movie intently, until suddenly he muted it, pressing the button almost violently and twisting away from Nick’s sleepy fingers on his knee.

Louis’s face was sharp when he turned to look at Nick. “Would you just ask me already?” he snapped.

“Ask you what?” Nick asked. Then he realized what Louis must have meant. “Oh. We don’t have to talk about it. If you don’t want to.”

Louis rolled his eyes a bit. “I know you’ve seen them and you’re weird about them. I’m not fragile. It won’t hurt me if you ask about them. I know you want to ask,” He said. Nick thought of Louis curling his hand over his scars for years. He wanted to touch him, to put his hand on Louis’s forearm maybe, but Nick remembered childhood warnings about touching cornered dogs, so he braided the tassel on one of his pillows instead.

After a long moment, Louis looked back at Nick. His gaze was steady on Nicks face. He had been anticipating this, Nick realized, had been anxious. Did he think Nick was going to ambush him with questions about his history of self harm over dinner?

“I think,” Louis said surprisingly softly, then looked away from Nick again. He stared out of the window while he spoke. “I think I want to talk about it. I just don’t know what to say. So you have to ask.” He finished, talking to the window, not Nick.

“You really don’t have to,” Nick said again, just to be sure.

“No I want to,” Louis said, “I’m just,” he coughed out a laugh, “scared shitless, I guess.”

Nick wanted to wrap Louis in a blanket and cuddle him until he would never be afraid of anything ever again. But Louis wanted to talk about it. Just because it scared him didn’t mean he didn’t want to talk about it. It didn’t mean he shouldn’t talk about it.

Louis was quiet for a minute, then said “I’ve never done this before.”

“Never? ” Nick asked. “Never talked about it with anyone?” Nick couldn’t imagine Louis all these years not telling anyone.

Louis shrugged. “I didn’t want anyone to know when I was doing it. I didn’t want them to worry or, like, make me stop.” He made a weird little twisty disgusted face. “And then I stopped and it didn’t seem important for people to know.” Louis stared at his hands. At some point he had started picking at his nails. The movements of his hands were almost violent and it scared Nick a little bit to watch. Like it was in some small way a reenactment of Louis hurting himself before. “I guess,” Louis said, “I guess I don’t want people to know now either.”

Nick watched Louis’s hands for a moment, then asked as softly as he could, “why do your scars bother you so much? Is it just you don’t want people to know?”

“It’s stupid, isn’t it. I was stupid.” Louis said. He wasn’t looking at Nick, he was glaring at the window. “Imagine if the stupidest thing you’ve ever done was all over your skin and everyone who saw it knew how stupid you were.”

Nick felt a little hurt, somewhere in his chest for Louis -- Louis so long ago who cut himself, and Louis now who was still that Louis a little bit, but who hated that Louis a little bit too. “I don’t think you’re stupid.” Nick said. He danced his fingers lightly over Louis’s knee again.

He didn’t know what he was doing. Even now, they were talking about Louis cutting himself and his scars and Nick still didn’t know how to talk to Louis about them, not really, but it was easier now that they had started. 

They were quiet together for a few minutes. Nick scooted close to Louis, and when Louis didn’t object, he tucked his head onto Louis’s shoulder.

Neither of them said anything. Louis unmuted the TV after little longer. Nick could feel someone’s pulse in his cheek, but he wasn’t sure if it was his or Louis’s.

Towards the end of the movie, Louis yawned cartoonishly. “Take me to bed,” he fake demanded. “I’m exhausted.” He was smiling, Nick could hear it in his voice.

While Nick was brushing his teeth, Louis met his eyes in the mirror and said “I don’t want you to worry about me. I’m okay now. It doesn’t even really feel like me who did it most of the time.”

Nick spat out his toothpaste froth. “Okay,” He said, mostly automatic. Then he thought about it for a second. “I think I know you wouldn’t do it. But you’d tell someone if you wanted to, right?” Nick asked. “Not me, unless you wanted, but, like, someone?”

Louis nodded and shrugged. “I don’t think I would ever want to again.” He said.

Later, they curled together in bed with the lights off. Nick had his cheek on the flat, muscular part of Louis chest. Their legs were tangled together. Nick had one hand shoved under Louis’s shoulder and the other draped over his torso. Neither of them could sleep like this, probably, but it felt so good to be that close together.

Nick could feel a question pressing up against the surface of his thoughts and the roof of his mouth. Maybe he could just ask it now. Maybe he could just open his mouth and ask it. He tried, opening his mouth, and then he shut it again, then opened it again. Then he eased his was in, asking “are we done talking?”

“If you want,” Louis said. “I don’t mind either way.”

“When did you stop?” Nicked asked after a moment.

“I did it once in the X Factor house,” Louis said. His voice was quiet and even. Louis cut himself in the X Factor house, Nick said in his head. He imagined Louis curled over on himself in a tiny bathroom with a razor blade against his thigh. Louis had been so bright in the video diaries, so happy. And he had cut himself. Nick pulled Louis a little closer in his arms. Because that Louis, the one cutting himself, and his Louis suddenly seemed so close together, bridged together by Louis on The X Factor. He had known, or maybe not known, but at least seen, Louis when he had been cutting himself.

“But, everything was different there and I could be different too,” Louis said. “And, you know, I was terrified someone would find out and kick me out or something and it didn’t seem worth it. Then afterwards everything changed so much it didn’t feel like part of my life anymore. Like, it didn’t fit anymore.”

Nick traced over the contours of Louis’s bare chest. He was really so handsome. Part of Nick wanted to bite a little at Louis’s nipples, or maybe roll his hips against him, see if maybe Louis would like Nick to go down on him, but it felt important to sit with the conversation, so Nick just kissed the bit of Louis’s shoulder he could reach without moving.

In the morning Nick made pancakes while Louis slept a little longer.

Louis stumbled out, bleary eyes and scruffy, with pillow creases still pressed into his unshaven cheeks.

“Morning,” Nick smiled at him across the room. “Do you have to work today?”

Louis shook his head, and then hauled Nick close to him for a good morning kiss and bite to the collar bone. “Got a real day off.” Louis said. He was so warm and sleepy that Nick decided he was done making pancake even though he still had a bit of batter left.

Nick scooted his chair close to Louis’s while they ate. He felt newly enamored with him, like he had just met Louis and was shy and blushy with infatuation. He didn’t know what to do with the feeling except press his leg against Louis's under the table.

Louis turned a little so he could eye Nick with a serious expression.

“Will you fuck me later?” He asked, his voice somber.

“Yeah, of course,” Nick replied, trying to match Louis’s tone. Their conversation last night had left Louis feeling a little shaken, Nick guessed. He touched Louis’s hair gently.

Louis nodded seriously, like he had just made a business deal, and then dropped the serious act by bursting open in a great big smile. He grabbed Nick’s chin and smacked a kiss square on his lips. “You’re so serious, honestly.” He said, laughing. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“Just ask,” Louis said that night when he caught Nick twice glancing at his scars in the mirror. Louis hadn’t put his pants on as soon as Nick finished fucking him. They had watched movies together in bed, naked hips brushing together under the blankets, nothing but skin, until Louis had slid his hand down into Nick’s lap and wanked him off deliciously slowly while the movie kept playing. Afterwards, he followed Nick, still naked, into the bathroom to wash his stomach and face.

“I guess,” Nick said, plucking at his hand towels, “I guess I keep wondering why you did it, and I thought I wouldn’t ask, but I hate thinking about you unhappy.”

Louis met his eyes in the mirror. “I used to get so angry and sad it was all I could think about,” Louis said, after a moment. It sounded rehearsed, or maybe not rehearsed, but like he had thought those words over and over, refining them until they could explain it to himself. “It was like it would never stop and I would be angry forever. And cutting myself made it stop. It was like turning off static on the TV. I don’t know.”

Nick nodded.

“You’re not freaked out, are you?” Louis asked. “That your boyfriend used to cut open his thighs in a rage?”

Nick didn't think that was quite what had happened, but Louis had been being mostly sarcastic, and anyway he was distracted by how it felt to hear Louis call himself Nick’s boyfriend.

“It’s like I’m dating the Hulk,” Nick said, and tried to make a Hulk face, which, he saw when he glanced at the mirror, was actually a bit of a monkey face. “Very sexy.” Nick smushed Louis’s cheeks with the palms of his hands, and then kissed him. Louis laughed into the kiss and shook a little bit against Nick. Nick backed him up against the sink, wrapped both his arms around Louis’s middle.

A few days later Nick pressed Louis’s shoulders into his bed before sliding down his body to lip at his cock. He kissed Louis’s stomach and hip bones and the seam of his thigh.

Nick pressed a kiss onto the general area of Louis’s scars. He couldn’t see Louis, but he thought he could hear Louis’s rolling his eyes at him.

“They’re just scars, Nick,” Louis said, but his voice was amused and annoyed and warm.

“I know,” Nick said and blew gently and ticklish up Louis’s stomach until he squirmed.


End file.
